USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 58
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To the progressiveness of H. E. O'Neil St. Regis Falls owns installa- tion of an electric lighting system at a comparatively early date. While yet hardly more than a boy, in the face of discouragement and scoffing by many of his elders, he installed a small dynamo in 1898 in the plan- ing mill of the Watson Page Lumber Co., and organized the St. Regis Light and Power Company. Enlargement becoming necessary because of increase of business, the plant was removed to the chair factory, and after the fire there an excellent power was developed at Ploof's Falls, about two miles down the river, in the town of Dickinson, and as com- plete works were constructed as are to be found anywhere. Both dam and power house are of concrete, thorough and modern in construction, and adequate to all demands that are likely to be made upon it. A tub factory is operated in connection with it. All of the stock having been
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acquired by members of the family, the corporation has been dissolved, and the business is now conducted under the name O'Neil & Co.
About 1868 Benoni G. Webb, from Bellmont, built a saw mill three- quarters of a mile below the village. It was operated by Webb & Stevers until the firm failed, when it was acquired and run by Hubbard & Lowell. It burned in 1873. Charles H. Young rebuilt it in 1883, and in the course of two or three years sold it to J. W. Webb. R. P. Lindsay and then H. E. O'Neil followed in ownership. Hugh Raymo next had it, and now it is owned by the Cascade Wood Products Co.
Other mills in Waverly have been a shingle mill, near Guide Board, built by W. T. ONeil about 1876, but long out of existence, two mills at Shanley, and a large rossing mill, built a few years ago by the St. Regis Paper Co. a half a mile above the village, which shut down permanently two or three years ago. It had a capacity of fifty thousand cords of pulp wood annually. Following the murder of Orrando P. Dexter in 1903, the Brown Tract Lumber Co. of Lewis county acquired the lands composing Mr. Dexter's private park, and built a mill at Goose Pond (now Gile) to work up the merchantable timber. That having been accomplished, the mill was dismantled and removed.
St. Regis Falls has a mica factory, established a few years since by Canadian capitalists, which employs twenty to thirty hands - mostly women and girls. The raw material is brought from Canada, and worked up here because the duty on the crude mica is less than on the finished product. Only the inferior grades of mica are handled. When manu- factured, mica is used for coating the cheaper kinds of wall paper, for giving toys and stage scenery the effect of having been frosted, as a lubricant in axle grease, etc., as an absorbent of glycerine in the manu- facture of explosives, in making buttons, and in flake form for electrical insulation. The product of the St. Regis Falls factory is utilized mainly for insulation purposes.
Upon the withdrawal of Peter C. Macfarlane from the firm of Hurd, Hotchkiss & Macfarlane, he and W. J. Ross formed a partnership, to which H. W. Stearns of Bombay was admitted a few months later, and built mills at Everton, as told in the sketch of Santa Clara. Reference to the undertaking is pertinent here only because the concern's railroad to Everton began at St. Regis Falls and extended half way across the town of Waverly.
The most casual consideration of the class of establishments which put St. Regis Falls on the map at all, and to which for a third of a century or more the activities of the place were almost wholly confined, can not fail to suggest plainly the character and conditions of the body
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of the people. There were of course a few men of intelligence, enter- prise and force, but the great majority were only common laborers, unlettered, many of foreign extraction and not naturalized, rough in garb and conduct, a proportion of them roystering if not lawless, and, not reckoning upon permanency of residence, had no particular interest for community welfare, and lacked individual enterprise and civic pride. Wages were squandered, and the liquor traffic grew and prospered. But marked and wholesome changes have occurred in recent years. While employment in the mills still affords the means of livelihood to most, the second generation of mill hands and lumberjacks, having had educa- tional advantages, and grown to realize that the village is more than a temporary camp, and that even the poorest inhabitant has a stake in the general welfare, is a much more substantial type than the pioneers had been ; the class of buildings has greatly improved ; public order is far better enforced; the average of decency and morality is higher ; and an interest in the schools and generous support for them are gratifyingly and commendably evident. In place of the single original schoolroom in the rear of a hovel the village now has a building which cost about nine thousand dollars, accommodates more than four hundred pupils, and employs eleven teachers. The higher branches are taught. J. L. Blood has been the school's efficient principal for eleven years. Indi- vidual enterprise has provided an excellent system of water-works, estab- lished an electric plant for lighting the streets, houses, stores and offices, a newspaper, a bank, fairly good hotels and satisfactory stores. The saloons and bars have been proscribed, and, all in all, the hamlet compares favorably with even larger places in respect to the requisites for comfortable and enjoyable living and home advantages. It incor- porated a few years ago as a village, but subsequently rescinded such action. It has a population of probably between twelve and fifteen hundred. Besides the industrial works, it has three churches, public and parochial schools, fifteen or eighteen stores, a bank building and four hotels - only two of which, however, are open for business.
The first hotel was built by Henry Bickford (the father of the mur- derer of Secor) from Dickinson, and is now known as the Frontier House. It has had many landlords since Bickford's time, among whom have been D. I. McNeil, Kenneth W. Kinnear, W. J. Alfred and Alexander Johnson. It is now owned by Evariste LeBoeuf, but is closed as a hotel because not permitted to have a bar. The Waverly House was built by William T. O'Neil in 1884, and kept by him for a vear or two. He sold to Watson Page, and the latter to L. C. Goodrich, who sold to W. J. Alfred, and he to George Prespare. George Bishop
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runs it as lessee. J. W. McNeil built over a store in which O'Neil & Young had traded, and sold it later to Simon McCloud, who keeps it. The St. Regis House also was formerly a store building, erected by O'Neil & Parks, and remodeled by George Bishop, the present owner. It is elosed because the town is " dry."
The first store was a Hammond concern, run by their mill super- intendent, Mr. Babcock ; the second, Samuel W. Gillett's; and the third, W'm. T. O'Neil's. Richards & O'Neil and then Vilas & O'Neil con- tinued the Hammond store, and then followed George W. Orton and Ira C. Green, Harrison G. Baker, Silas P. Fleming, and Charles H. Young - the latter as the partner of Mr. O'Neil. The Fleming store, which was a continuation of the first mercantile venture of Wm. T. O'Neil, was bought later and run by the Shaws in connection with their tannery.
The St. Regis Falls National Bank was chartered and opened its doors for business in May, 1905, with W. T. and H. E. O'Neil, Alexander Macdonald, Frank S. Young, E. P. Tryon and R. H. Burns constituting the board of directors. H. E. O'Neil was the first president, and con- tinued in that capacity until 1916, when, other interests claiming most of his time, he was succeeded by A. S. O'Neil, a brother. A. May, the first cashier, is now with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and H. L. Ketcham, assistant eashier, is treasurer of the St. Lawrence Trust Co. at Ogdensburg. T. H. Delaire, a St. Regis Falls boy, is the present cashier ; and A. S. O'Neil, Dr. W. A. Wardner, O. L. Wilson and E. L. Hulett have taken the places of Messrs. W. T. O'Neil, Macdonald, Tryon and Burns in the directorate. The bank is capitalized at $25,000, has an earned surplus of upwards of $12,000, and its deposits total over $100,000. That the management means that it shall be helpful first to local interests is indicated by the fact that all of its available resources are in loans and discounts, next to nothing being locked up in bonds except such as are required to be owned to secure circulation. Its bank- ing house and fixtures are carried in assets at a valuation of $5,000.
A MURDER
An unexpiated murder was committed September 9, 1903, at Dexter Lake, which lies four or five miles east of south from St. Regis Falls, and.at which Orrando P. Dexter from New York city had established a private park and built a costly cottage a dozen years or more previously. In accordance with his daily custom, Mr. Dexter had started this morn- ing to drive to Santa Clara for his mail, but had proceeded hardly more
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than an eighth of a mile when he was shot. The bullet, evidently fired from a high-power gun, penetrated the buggy back, struck Mr. Dexter near the shoulder blade, passed completely through his body, just above the heart, and imbedded itself in the horse's rump. A few rods farther on Mr. Dexter fell from the buggy, and was found almost at once by one of his employees who had heard the report of the gun. He was then breathing, but died without having spoken. The generally accepted theory at the time was that the murderer, aware of Mr. Dexter's custom, had laid in ambush at one side of the drive awaiting him, and after he had passed stepped into the road and fired. Certainly he could not have shot from his place of concealment, for the course of the bullet proved that it came from straight behind, and not at a tangent. No evidence could be found pointing to the murderer. Mr. Dexter's father, who was the head of the American News Company, offered a reward of five thousand dollars for evidence that would justify an arrest and secure conviction, but though the best detective ability in the locality and from outside as well gave effort to unravel the mystery not the faintest definite clue was ever developed - which, however, is not to say that the identity of the murderer was not strongly suspected in some quarters.
Mr. Dexter had been in continuous contention with many people almost from the day of his coming to Waverly, and had had litigation with some of them. At one time he lodged charges with the 'Governor against the county's district attorney, and pressed them through a trial the costs of which mounted into thousands of dollars, and the finding in which exonerated the accused. He brought civil and criminal proceed- ings against other well known residents also for alleged conspiracy, and sued at least one newspaper publisher for libel because of publication of an item in town correspondence which two of the attorneys whom he sought to retain advised him was not libelous at all. He transferred his legal residence from New York to Connecticut in order, as was believed, that he might bring his actions in United States instead of in State tribunals. He had other troubles also, arising from lumbermen attempting to cross his preserve. It was thought that some enemy he had made by his contentions disposition must have committed the crime, though it is not, and was not at the time, conceivable that any one of those with whom his quarrels had been the most bitter, and which loomed largest in the public mind, could have been capable even of con- templating such a crime - much less of having committed it.
Mr. Dexter was forty-eight years of age at the time of his death, was
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an admitted attorney at law, and in ordinary personal intercourse easily made himself agreeable and interesting; but when in antagonism with any one over real or imagined affronts or grievances seemed to be unre- lentingly pugnacious and implacably vindictive.
SOME OF THE LEADING MEN OF THE TOWN
While but few Waverly men have held county or district offices, it must be recognized that those who won distinction in that field chose discriminatingly, so that they enjoyed the best that was to be had, and in generous measure. William T. O'Neil was elected to the Assembly in 1881, and also in each of the three immediately following years. His service was excellent, and in one of his terms he was prominent as a candidate for the Speakership. He and Theodore Roosevelt became hearty co-workers in the Assembly, and were warm personal friends. The latter was of course the more dramatic figure and the more aggres- sively combative, but he himself, as well as others generally, recognized that Mr. O'Neil possessed the calmer and safer judgment, and thus acted often as a counterpoise to Mr. Roosevelt's sometimes too great impetuosity. The friendship formed between them in this period con- tinued unbroken to the time of Mr. O'Neil's death in 1909, and both when Mr. Roosevelt was Governor and when President Mr. O'Neil was his guest by invitation at the executive mansion. Mr. O'Neil was elected to the State Senate in 1906 and again in 1908, but died during his second term. While in the Senate his exceptional abilities commanded for him the most respectful consideration, and his committee assign- ments were among the very best and most responsible of those not requiring a legal training. William H. Flack was county clerk from 1898 to 1904, and served one full term and a part of another in Con- gress from the Essex-Clinton-Franklin-St. Lawrence district. He died in office. Alexander Macdonald came to St. Regis Falls from Nova Scotia after graduation from Middlebury College to become principal of the high school. Almost as soon as he had been naturalized he was elected school commissioner for the second commissioner district, and held the office continuously for nine years. In 1910 he was elected to the Assembly, in which he served with distinction for six terms. In 1914 he was a leading candidate for the Speakership, his prominence in the contest joined to recognition of his excellent abilities and long experience gaining for him the chairmanship of the committee on ways and means - a position which he held again in 1915. In 1916 he was appointed deputy State conservation commissioner at a salary of six
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thousand dollars per annum. Mr. Macdonald is a son-in-law of the late William T. O'Neil.
CHURCHES AND SOCIETIES
So far as known, the Roman Catholic services at St. Regis Falls were of only occasional occurrence in early times, and were held by priests from Brushton in private houses; and in 1883 Father Normandeau of Brushton brought about the incorporation of St. Regis Church of St. Regis Falls, N. Y., with J. Quesnel and J. S. Bushey as the lay trustees. A short time afterward Rev. Father F. J. Ouellet located in the village, and effected a new incorporation on August 22, 1883, under the title Saint Ann's Church, St. Regis Falls, with Joseph Bushey and E. St. Hilaire as the lay trustees. Services were held for a time in one of the hotels, but the erection of a church edifice was quickly undertaken, and completed in 1884. Father Ouellet carried his ministrations also to Everton, Santa Clara, Spring Cove and Brandon, and often to the logging camps at remote points in the forests. His rectorship at St. Regis Falls has continued uninterruptedly for thirty-odd years, and for the past few years he has had an assistant. The present membership of the church is about nine hundred, having fallen off a little from the high point through the removal of mill operatives on account of dis- satisfaction with the scale of wages in the mills. The present lay trustees are J. B. St. Onge and Frank Henry. ,
While it is presumable that Methodist services were held from time to time at an early day by clergymen located at Nicholville or Dickinson Center, the first recognition of St. Regis Falls by conference as a station or parish was in 1882, when it was joined with Dickinson Center, and since which date one pastor has served both places. Services were held at first in the lumber company's hall, and in 1887 the erection of a church edifice was begun, which was finished the next year at a cost of $3,100. The present membership of the church is about one hundred and fifty. The society has provided a comfortable parsonage, and the pastor makes his home at the Falls. At the first election in 1886 Wil- liam E. King, Mrs. Esther Macfarlane and Daniel W. Flack were chosen trustees. The present trustees are M. A. Rowell, A. A. Sonth- worth, B. E. Ames, E. E. Bondry, J. A. Ketcham and Leslie M. Saunders.
The First Free Will Baptist Church of St. Regis Falls owes its organization and even its continued existence to Rev. Nelson Ramsdell, now eighty-four years of age, who came from Dickinson Center to make his home in old age with one of his sons. The church was organized
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March 23, 1893, and for a year or more worshiped in J. W. Webb's hall. The church edifice, begun in 1894, was not finished until six years later, though it was occupied from 1895. Mr. Ramsdell has been the pastor for two periods besides having officiated at other times when there was a vacancy. In 1913 the society voted to close the church doors because the attendance had become small and because also so many of the men- hers refused to contribute to the support of a pastor ; but interest revived the next year, and the church has since remained open. The records give one hundred and eight as the maximum membership at any one time, and now the number is just under fifty. The society entered into fellowship with the St. Lawrence Baptist Association in 1913.
At Guide Board, a very small hamlet four miles south of St. Regis Falls, is a mission church, erected in 1896 through the generosity of wealthy people then residing in the vicinity or accustomed to spend their summers in the locality. The church is Presbyterian, and under charge of the Adirondack mission, whose headquarters are at Keese's Mills in Brighton. Services are conducted regularly throughout the summer seasons, usually by divinity students, while in winter neighbor- ing clergy officiate at intervals.
The St. Regis Falls Universalist Church was formed in June, 1916, since when services have been held every alternate Sunday in Lemieux's hall by clergymen or divinity students from St. Lawrence University at Canton. The movement has developed a considerable interest, and the attendance at the meetings is in respectable numbers.
Durkee Post, G. A. R., No. 504, was organized a number of years ago. The same pathetic condition obtains here that prevails in this order everywhere - the membership decreasing steadily, and the organization doomed to die, as infirmity and dissolution are fast summoning the veterans of the civil war for the final roll call. The post had sixty members at one time, and now has but fourteen.
St. Regis Falls Lodge No. 100, I. O. O. F., was organized in December, 1886, with Hon. William H. Flack noble grand, and S. R. Gile vice grand. It soon erected a building for a home, which fire destroyed, and something like ten years ago it built a larger and better structure at a cost of about eight thousand dollars, the upper floor of which it occupies as its own lodge room, and rents to the Masons and other organizations. The ground floor is finished for two business places, one of which is occupied for a post-office. The lodge has about one hundred and twenty-five members.
Blue Mountain Lodge No. 874, F. and A. M., was organized June 29,
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1909, with Jerry LaPoint worshipful master and J. L. Blood senior warden. It has sixty-eight members.
A sanatorium for treatment of the liquor and opium habits, which was located originally at Tupper Lake, was transferred to St. Regis Falls in 1893, and for two or three years had a considerable number of patients. It accomplished cures which actually " stuck " in a number of cases, some of which had been decidedly tough. It also treated patients for other ailments, but business failing to continue in paying volume the establishment was closed.
POPULATION
The population of Waverly at the date of erection is unknown, there having been no census between 1880 and 1890. In the latter year it had 2,270 inhabitants, who had decreased in 1892 to 1,750, mainly by reason of the partition of the town to erect Altamont; and in 1900 the number had fallen further to 1,615 because of mills having closed and lumbering operations having been discontinued. Recovery came to a considerable extent as the hard woods began to be used and pulp mills were started, so that in 1905 the population had jumped to 2,160. It has since continued practically unchanged - the figures for 1915 having been 2,133, of whom 147 were aliens.
CHAPTER XXII WESTVILLE
Westville was formed from Constable in 1829, and was so called from the fact that it was the west half of what remained of the parent town after Fort Covington had been set off therefrom. For many years the northern of the two hamlets in Westville was known as West Con- stable, but is now generally called Westville Corners. The other is Westville Center.
The town had a population of just about six hundred when erected, but having always lacked transportation facilities, and its industries having dwindled with the collapse of the iron works and with the dis- appearance of its forests, its growth was slow even during the period in which there was growth at all, while from 1875 to 1900 the trend was steadily in the contrary direction. It was one of the half dozen towns in the county which made a gain in the number of its inhabitants dur- ing the period of the civil war, and in 1875 the maximum was reached, the census of that year having given it a population of 1,721, which fell exactly six hundred in the then ensuing twenty-five years - five-sixths of which loss occurred between 1875 and 1890. The population has remained practically stationary since 1900, and by the enumeration of 1915 stands at 1,128.
Westville's surface is generally level. In the northern part the soil is clayey, and in the central southern sandy. Elsewhere it is generally a light loam, with interval lands here and there which are rich and very productive. Formerly a considerable section of the southern part was thought to be almost worthless for farming purposes, but much of these lands have since been developed wonderfully, and have become Malone's garden patch, producing the earliest and finest vegetables and berries.
The town is watered by the Salmon river, which traverses it from southeast to northwest ; by Deer river, which cuts through its southwest corner ; and by a number of brooks, the largest of which are the Plumb and Briggs brooks.
In the northeastern part there is a sulphur spring, the properties of the water being similar to the more famous spring at Massena. Forty or fifty years ago it was frequented by considerable numbers of people,
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who found accommodations during their sojourn at a neighboring farm house, and used the water for its real or supposed beneficial qualities, and larger numbers were accustomed to drive to the spring and take the water home with them. It is less visited now.
Another spring of a remarkable character lies in the southwestern part of the town, its water as clear as crystal, pure and cold. Over a space of perhaps twenty to thirty feet in diameter the water boils up visibly through the sand, spreading out to a diameter of forty or fifty feet, and at some points is three or four feet deep.
Amos Welch, from Grand Isle. Vt., was the first settler in the present limits of the town, having occupied in 1800 the site of the present burying ground at Westville Corners, and built and operated the first saw mill : probably in the immediate vicinity. Even the oldest inhabitant, aged ninety-six years, does not remember ever to have heard of it. But the explanation is, I think, that Welch owned the property for only a short time, and that the life of the mill was brief. James Constable visited this northern section in 1804 and 1805 to look after the Con- stable landed interests here, and noted in the diary that he kept on the first trip that John Livingston then had a saw mill near Westville Corners, and on the second tour that the mill had been burned a few weeks previously "by a fire intended to drive away mosquitoes, possibly owing to carelessness." Mr. Constable's diary adds that Livingston him- self had no contract with the Constable estate for his lands, but that he held " under that of Amos Welch." Moreover, he refers in 1804 to a saw mill at Welch's, four miles east of Man's, as nearly finished. so that it would seem that after having sold to Livingston Welch had moved to . Constable.
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